07:40 – My basement lab is no more. Well, the room is still there, and it still looks pretty much the same, but its function is changing. Amidst everything else on my to-do list, I decided that it was time to convert my working lab into a prep lab. So far, the visible changes are subtle. Instead of shelves and cabinets filled with relatively small bottles of a few hundred different chemicals, those shelves are now in the process of being filled with relatively large bottles of a few score chemicals, all of which are used in making up kits. I’m also going to fill in an unused wall area with another 20-odd feet (7 meters) of shelving.
It’s hard enough keeping up with the chemicals for just the chemistry kits. In April, we’ll be shipping biology kits as well, and by August we’ll be shipping forensics kits. There’s some overlap, but not a great deal. Thus the need for more working and storage space. I regret the loss of this dedicated working lab area, but a prep lab is a higher priority. And, obviously, it will still be usable as a working lab, albeit not as convenient.
I was going to write something with a straight face about converting our upstairs hall bathroom into my new working lab, ripping out the toilet and bathtub and installing working benches and cabinets. I was going to make it so convincing that Barbara would believe it and think I’d lost my mind. But April 1 is too far in the future, and anyway Barbara has been so good-natured about my taking over large areas of the house for business purposes that it wouldn’t be fair to provoke her further.
RBT wrote:
“I was going to write something with a straight face about converting our upstairs hall bathroom into my new working lab, ripping out the toilet and bathtub and installing working benches and cabinets. I was going to make it so convincing that Barbara would believe it and think I’d lost my mind. But April 1 is too far in the future, and anyway Barbara has been so good-natured about my taking over large areas of the house for business purposes that it wouldn’t be fair to provoke her further.”
One of my pals actually convinced his wife to allow him to do something like this. He’s a self taught photography nut and needed a darkroom, so he persuaded his wife to allow him to convert their en suite bathroom to a darkroom, leaving him and the wife to share the main bathroom with their two kids. I was amazed that he had the balls to even ask. Eventually they extended the house and he added a purpose built darkroom and converted the temporary darkroom back to an en suite.
Talk to me after he’s taken over two of the four bedrooms (my office + workroom), the finished part of the basement, about 20% of the unfinished part of the basement, the kitchen table for weeks on end, part of the dining room, and most of the library.
I would have pushed most women to the breaking point long ago.
The next step is to expand the basement! I can’t seem to find the link, but a few months ago the police found raided a place where the people had tunneled into the hill behind their house, and constructed essentially a huge, underground warehouse for growing MJ. Really quite an impressive operation, but I wonder what they did with all the dirt!
Ah, I know what they did with it. I saw how to do it in The Great Escape.
If Bob suddenly has an urge to write a Botany book, and his yard “sprouts” many raised garden beds, we will know something is up.
The Great Escape? Well, this underground warehouse would have represented a lot of dirt to shake down your pantlegs. Still, every time you take Colin for a walk…
OFD wonders when an idea like that will dawn on the apparent cretins up here who still farm it aboveground in regular garden plots, while evidently unaware of the constant OD-green choppers patrolling up and down the valley. Every once in a while there is a big bust, where they roll out their Homeland Insecurity Stimulus armored vehicles and SWAT teams with machine guns and artillery and arrest some skinny little hippie geeks and cart them off for lengthy and harshly punitive prison sentences, alongside murderers, rapists and pedophiles. Oh wait–we let the latter out after just a few years and don’t bother alerting the ‘hoods they move into. The country’s turning into a giant prison-state, with most of the inmates serving sentences for non-violent offenses and a few fat cats making zillions off it and paying off their stooges in government.
Ending the “War on Drugs” is one place where I totally agree with Ron Paul. We have lost the “war” due to the brutality and harshness on both sides. I’m fairly sure that the founders never intended for a citizen soldier to have their front door busted in and shot over a mistaken drug raid:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/tucson-swat-team-defends-shooting-iraq-marine-veteran/story?id=13640112#.T0gjuvX4bb4
And people around me still wonder why I preferred living in Germany.
I hear ya, Lynn. It is sick. (and not “sick” in the “good” sense that contemporary kidz use it).
And speaking of Germany, our daughter is home for the weekend from McGill with a German friend (girl) who speaks nearly perfect English and is from the Schleswig-Holstein area, origin, of course, of most of my own bloody Anglo-Saxon brute warrior ancestors. She is cute, too. With a sense of humor. But I am old enuff to be her grandpa, technically, and Mrs. OFD is on the premises…
Ha, ha. After Jeri passed, my daughter (22 at the time) came to help me sort and pack for the move back to the US. We went into Berlin for an evening on the town, and she noted to me, “Everybody in Germany is so good looking.” All sides of my family — except for my maternal Flemish grandmother — are German, and my kids’ mom was even more German than I. Thus my daughter was seeing her cousins over there. And I always did think my girl cousins were cute.
Wasted my time and gasoline (price has shot up over 50¢ in one swell foop again) in Muncie. Had several things to accomplish, but a morning video emergency took priority until afternoon.
Got to Muncie about 15:00, but the business office I needed to visit was closed on Friday afternoons, and–as the grandkids in Germany would say in English–“I knew it not.”
I have a Sears vacuum cleaner (made by Panasonic) in which the hose assembly has crumbled completely, with no apparent way for home repair. Sears does not carry the hose for that particular unit, although they carry almost every other one manufactured for the last 50 years or more. This vacuum has powered attachments and a slinky-like electric cord that runs around the hose to connect with them, so it is not possible to use the vacuum without all parts of that hose working.
Took the unit to the Muncie vacuum repair place that my family has used for decades, and immediately I realized by their reaction that if we are now a service economy, we are a damned poor one. I was told that the store location I was at, could not fix the unit, but that I should take it to their downtown shop, where they stock more parts. They gave me directions to the store, which were entirely wrong. After driving around for 10 or 15 minutes and finding no one who knew anything about the store I was looking for, I had yet another stop to make, and was near there, so I made that stop, which took almost an hour. Afterwards, I asked about directions to this mystery store, got some, then headed off and successfully found it. Too late! It closed at 17:00, and when I arrived it was 17:35.
In contemplating this, I realized that in my parents’ generation, the guy at the first store would have taken the machine, got my name and number, did what was necessary to transfer it to the other store location, and then called me with the results, positive or negative. And if it were negative, they would have made an offer on a new one. More rumination on this made me realize that there is a lot of turnover in stores around me, and the people working there are–more often than not–struggling with the very basics of how to deal with the store computer they have to use for almost everything they do. They are not trained in anything like good salesmanship and customer satisfaction. That guy in the first store made me unhappy, and sent away a guaranteed of a new vacuum, if mine could not be repaired.
That lack of training in even the basics of store necessities, was brought home just a little bit later, when I stopped at the Muncie Walmart to get a few items before returning home. I needed more flash drives to replace what I used on the morning video emergency (somebody lost a flash drive of video contents). As I approached the checkout in the electronics section, the clerk did not know how to deal with some activity, had done the wrong thing, and now had to call a manager to back out of the transaction, in order to do it over again properly. Typical. Forget the basics of store operation, clerks these days never know ANYTHING about the stock the store carries–even where it is located, in the case of Walmart. Whenever I cannot find something and ask a Walmart clerk, they almost always admit they do not know, but invite me to go on a treasure hunt with them, which often wastes as much as 10 minutes, and the item still is not found, while they frequently repeat, “I know we carry that.” But worse, they cannot even seem to get past the basics of the machinery they must use every day.
So, I cooled my jets for the 5 minutes it took a manager to come and rescue the poor incompetent girl, who obviously had not had enough training at store basics. Meanwhile, the register was locked up to further transactions until the manager came.
I find out a lot of interesting stuff by just asking questions when other people are afraid to. I noticed that the flash drives in Tiny Town are on racks that require an employee key to unlock, while the ones at the Muncie store just hang free (we are talking about a price of $12 for 8gb and $17 for 16gb). I mentioned this to the supervisor as I was paying, and she commented that the store in Tiny Town has a very high level of theft. This is quite interesting, because Tiny Town has an actual population of around 7,500, while the student enrollment at Muncie’s Testicle Tech alone is over 20,000, then comes the city population.
I am pretty ticked off at having to go back to Muncie for a second time to visit the vacuum repair store. But in this era, there really is not much choice. Jeri was always against shopping on Sunday, and I went along with her request not to; but the fact is that not shopping on Sunday in protest, is never going to get stores to close on Sunday. If I take the vacuum to get repaired in Indy, I would probably find the same attitudes there, and my boycott of the much nearer store will really have accomplished nothing. So, it looks like more gas use and more time spent in Muncie on Monday.
OFD wrote:
“She is cute, too. With a sense of humor. But I am old enuff to be her grandpa, technically, and Mrs. OFD is on the premises…”.
Send them over to me. 🙂
And the four bridesmaids who were auditioning to be the next bride you mentioned a while back…
Chuck wrote:
““Everybody in Germany is so good looking.” All sides of my family — except for my maternal Flemish grandmother — are German, and my kids’ mom was even more German than I. Thus my daughter was seeing her cousins over there. And I always did think my girl cousins were cute.”
Not everyone. In Year 11 we had an exchange student from Germany in our class. I was of the firm opinion that she should have had a bag sewn over her head. But the (Australian born, I think) class goddess had a German name and she was one of the most beautiful girls I’ve ever set eyes on. And she was dating the scruffiest looking guy I’d ever seen.
Chuck wrote:
“And people around me still wonder why I preferred living in Germany.”
They have snow there, don’t they? Pass.
I really think a good part of what makes the Germans good looking, is that they are lean — and they do not do it by avoiding fat. It is (or was) darned near impossible to find anything in grocery stores labeled ‘fat-free’ or ‘light’. This country is a nation of fatties — both adults and children. The German diet is radically different from the American one, and that starts with breakfast, where they often have a couple very thin-sliced bits of meat on what we would call a small sliced ‘dinner roll’ that is buttered along with the meat. Protein kills off hunger, and that protein, along with some fruit, lasts until the main meal at noon. They eat a proper full meal then with meat, potatoes, and vegetables. Then bread and cheese in the evening. If they get hungry during the day, they almost always have an apple or some kind of fruit with them to eat. A South African girl in one of my German classes, frequently brought a container of sliced mangoes and shared them during the break. I seldom see anybody around me eating fruit of any kind. And just try and find mangoes in mainstream grocery stores.
I think plumpness is attractive up to a point. But the exchange student went far beyond that. And that face! I’ve seen prettier looking guys!
Meredith, the class goddess, was slim but not too slim. A number of other girls in the class with German names were of the correct weight or slightly over. It’s hard to look good if you’re carrying 50%+ more weight than you should.
I rarely saw an overweight person of either sex or any age in Germany in 2003, but in the US it was different. There were fit looking people there but a lot of people who really needed to cut down. I was fortunate that my hosts in the US provided most of my meals. Smalish and nutritious. One night when I took my hostess out for dinner I had soup and a main. The main was ribs, literally hanging off both sides of a large plate. I had no room for desert but I bet a lot of Americans would have.
I am pretty ticked off at having to go back to Muncie for a second time to visit the vacuum repair store.
If you need a new carpet sucking device (vacuum) I highly recommend the Dyson brand of devices. We have a Kirby that weighs entire too much but it built like a tank. It cleaned OK. However, the Dyson beats it hands down for pulling stuff out of the carpet. A room that was just sucked with the Kirby (with a new bag) was redone with the Dyson. The results were somewhat surprising. A lot of stuff showed up in the Dyson.
We were so impressed we bought a second, smaller Dyson to use in my studio and office area. They are expensive no doubt. Factor in the price of the Kirby bags over a few years and the price difference fades. We did purchase our Kirby used from a Kirby dealer so operationally it was at it’s peak.
The Dyson gets my thumbs up and my vote.
She is cute, too. With a sense of humor. But I am old enuff to be her grandpa, technically, and Mrs. OFD is on the premises…
One can still enjoy the view 😉
Yeah, just don’t get caught.
My wife would let me look, as long as I looked at them as if they were paintings in a museum. Look slightly bored, keep back at least six feet, and no touching!
Ending the “War on Drugs” is one place where I totally agree with Ron Paul. We have lost the “war”…
There is something about a war “on” that seems to preclude any possibility of victory. War on Poverty, War on Drugs, War on Crime, War on Terror… the designation seems only to be used when there is no chance of success.
I’ve been putting off buying a new vacuum for over a year now, and it’s getting near time. I was hoping Chuck was going to buy a new one last year, and get his review, and here he is getting his old one repaired. Now that Ray has chimed in on the Dyson, I’ve remembered that I left this for too long. I now need more vacuum bags, or will once the one I put in the vacuum yesterday fills. With a GR in the house that could be measured in hours. Right now I’m using a Hoover canister, which I suspect is made by Panasonic. It uses the standard “S” bags that Hoover standardized decades ago. It actually has been a very good vacuum, but is starting to fall apart beyond my ability to wrap duct tape around it. The cord no longer retracts, and the cover that holds the accessories from falling out, falls off. Stuff like that.
So, Ray, what model(s) did you get? Upright or canister? I’ve been looking at the “Animal” branded models, but find the uprights bulky and heavy compared to a canister power head, though the “ball” type works pretty well. Their canisters leave much to be desired for storage compared to the model I have now. The ability to just empty the contents without replacing bags is very desirable.
Miehle get good reviews, but require bags, and quite expensive ones at that. They’re on the list, but are falling just on the bag factor alone.
My local vacuum guy is pushing a built-in (Nilfisk) which is the most expensive option (to me, they are ALL expensive), but has a much larger, and also bag-less, receptacle for the dirt. His angle is this would be the last vacuum I would buy, with a lifetime warranty on the body and fifteen years on the motor. Dealing with a 30′ hose could be a pain, but I have no experience with built-ins, other than having friends who swear by them. The cost is rather off-putting. If I’m going to pay that kind of money for something that sucks, she better be able to make me coffee, too!
What’s the consensus from the group?
Roy wrote: “There is something about a war “on” that seems to preclude any possibility of victory. War on Poverty, War on Drugs, War on Crime, War on Terror… the designation seems only to be used when there is no chance of success.”
From the Wikipedia article on Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell:
I’ve often wondered who got their dystopian world more correct, Orwell or Huxley. Orwell has pulled into an early lead with perpetual war (War on…), government surveillance and social media (AKA public mind control), but I think Huxley has an opportunity to score later in the game with corporate idolatry, genetics and the use of drugs to pacify the citizenry. Both use Cult of Personality equally well.
For carpets with animals, nothing beat our Orek hypoallergenic (made for animals) that we once had. The Orek is only good for carpets, IMO; it does a very poor job as a regular vacuum. The best canister we ever owned was the Miele Cat & Dog sold in Germany (what is sold in America apparently is not even made in Germany). A canister with a carpet attachment is nowhere near as good as the Orek, however. One of the attractions for me to the Miele was its silence. But apparently, Americans WANT their vacuums to be loud, and so they are. Behind the Miele for me, is anything Panasonic.
I will pay for the convenience of the bags. Last thing I want in life is the hassle of dealing with dust and dirt twice — as any shop vac owner is all too familiar with, as you have to vacuum up the mess when you are done. I’m not that poor — yet. With canisters, I take a small strip of wide packing tape, put that over the hole in the bag, remove it, and not one speck of dust comes out of that bag while it makes its way to the trash bin.
If I were in a house that I knew I was going to stay in, I would definitely opt for a central vac. Years ago, when I was high on the IEC vacs made in Nevada (I think they are now extinct), I had extra-long hoses made so the vac did not have to be carried up the stairs with you while vacuuming them, so I can attest that long hoses are not a problem. With the floor attachment in one hand, you wrap the hose around your backside, holding it in a comfortable place with the other hand, and with that arrangement, you can manage any length hose.
At the moment, I am just trying to get a working vacuum. Meanwhile, I am using the shop vac, which really does not do a very good job on household dust — especially dust bunnies. It just shoves them around, without ever sucking them up.
Thanks for the feedback, and the spelling clarification. Miehle, as I spelled it, are a manufacturer of printing presses. Orecks weren’t carried at the admittedly few places I looked for vacuums, locally. I’ll have to check them out.
The Hoover “S” bags I currently use have an adhesive patch for the hole, but I never use it. I just pop it into a plastic grocery bag, with no mess. My mother had a Kirby upright that need to be dumped out through a small slit and made a bigger mess than it cleaned up. She switched to a Filter Queen, which is nothing more than an expensive shop vac, though it does work much better. Still makes a mess. The Dyson dirt cups seem to be pretty small, but easily poured into another container. I’ll have to wait to hear from Ray about them.
The dog, as OFD will surely attest, can shed a LOT of hair. Actually, if I “pre-vacuum” with the shop vac just for the hair, I would get more mileage out of the bags. Hmmmm…
The dogs here are/were goldens, and I could sweep and vacuum the living room and five minutes later, no exaggeration, there would be more clumps of hair. We have blown through several vacuum cleaners over the years and right now are using a Bissell Power Clean thing, that seems to do OK for the crap we have to deal with here. I will take under advisement, however, the recommendations here for when we move to the next house, which I am thinking will be our last move.
Mrs. OFD just left, taking our daughter and the German girl back to Montreal this afternoon. I had a nice chat this morning mit der fraulein and she is a history/poli-sci major specializing in the Cold War. She evidently loves history and hopes to spend the summer in Boston, which, of course, is certainly a good place for history geeks. Also mentioned that her professor told her if she wished to continue in this field she should learn Arabic, as apparently tons of archives are being opened lickety-split with a bunch of it dealing with the Cold War era and the various machinations of the Euro and U.S. powers over in the Sandbox, among other places. I maintained the proper physical distance and slightly bored but interested expression and nevertheless entertained dark and brutish thoughts in the brain stem background somewhere.
We got us about six to eight inches of heavy wet snow and it is still blowing around and quite blustery here. More flurries and squalls to follow today and tonight and we shall see tomorrow. It is more like normal winter here again, praise be to God (and of course the physics, chemistry, biology, cosmology, etc. that make it all happen).
Now that the fempod has left the mother ship OFD can watch bloody and violent war and horror and crime shows on our home media setup, which is not the case when they are here. I think I’m at about Season Six for The Shield, which only did seven seasons; Season Three for The Tudors; and I’ve already managed to run through Justified, Breaking Bad, and Sons of Anarchy. Mrs. OFD likes to watch PBS stuff, old movies that she saw as a kid, and the extremely lightweight Canadian comedies, such as Corner Gas. Holy crap, I watched several episodes of that and said WTF. Must be my gross, brutish and disgusting American sense of humor. And I had a brief argument with someone else on another board recently about how funny Seinfeld was. (for me, NOT!) Mrs. OFD and I found the show singularly unfunny and additionally, felt zero affinity, empathy, sympathy, whatever, for any of the characters. Although his Super Bowl halftime commercial was sorta amusing.
Different strokes, etc.
Well, there’s always Scrubs, which is really just an updated version of the Three Stooges, literally. (Like all women, Barbara claims not to like the Three Stooges, but the couple of times I’ve actually convinced her to watch one, she laughed. She’ll deny it, but she laughed.)
I enjoyed all of The Three Stooges when I was a kid, and then once again, watching them with my kids. I still have not figured out how they did the one when they were piano movers. That piano seemed to have a mind of its own, and I remember looking closely as a kid to see if some kind of rope was involved, but could not find one. Somebody into film told me it was just the carcass of a piano, that all the works had been removed, but I loved the piano seemed half-animal, like it was playing a “you’re it” game.
Ah, I spelled Miele (MEE-luh) right, but missed on Oreck, huh? Oreck in the US are sold by mom and pop franchisees who ordinarily do not carry any other brand. They used to be manufactured in New Orleans, but the company moved to Tennessee a few years back. Most are now made in China, I suspect; at the very least, the parts are all manufactured there, now. Our 13 year-old Oreck broke in a way that it could not be fixed, just before we moved to Germany. The dealer did show us that the broken component was now manufactured differently, so it could not break (and thus also could not be used to fix our machine), but we declined to buy a new one and bought a Panasonic, instead. Good thing, because just a few months later came the sudden move to Germany. The Panasonic was a basic model and cost only $129, bought from a guy down the street, who was a fundamentalist minister and had a vacuum repair business to support his religious habit. The Panasonic was a good deal, too, as we gave it to my son and daughter, who were sharing a house at school with 6 other people, and they managed to lose track of it (one of their roommates appropriated it). Good thing we didn’t pop for the Oreck, which had zoomed to over $600 at the time we needed a new one.
Miele get good reviews, but require bags, and quite expensive ones at that. They’re on the list, but are falling just on the bag factor alone.
We have a Miele and I have been unimpressed. No, let me correct that. Our Miele has made a strong impression on me, but it is a negative one. The basic vacuum runs fine, as does the beater head. (The main unit is marked Made in West Germany, the beater head Made in Switzerland.) But… we had to replace the hose for the power head, the other hose is held together with Gorilla tape, the switch had to be replaced, the cord refuses to retract every couple of months, the button on the wand that controls the telescoping is gone leaving a sharp edge, the compartment where the tools are stored never wants to open. And so on.
Well, scratch that, Miele is at the top of the price range, and it’s beginning to sound like many German products. Expensive, well engineered, good marketing, but overly complex and expensive to fix.
I’ve read some reviews about sorted broken bits on various Dyson products, as well. Perhaps the cheaper brands are “good enough”?
We are right now at that “good enough” stage, but will entertain various scenarios for our new place when the time comes.
Our last German product here was, for sure, “…expensive, well engineered…” and did some “good marketing” with legs that come up to here, and long blonde hair and blue eyes, but unfortunately dumb as a bag of hammers. Our most recent German product was maybe not as tall, certainly not blonde, but relatively well-engineered, a bit more complex, and apparently a cheap date who doesn’t mind roughing it a bit.
Well, six to eight so far of heavy wet and it is still coming down steadily; the fempod called from the road and said north of here there is nada. Typical; I have a 30-mile commute to work and often it will be snowing here and raining there or the reverse, with that interstate highway weather-affecting dividing line on the Bolton flats, between two “mountain” ranges; I use the quotes because they’re nowhere near the White Mountains, western Maine mountains, or remotely close to the Rockies in elevation but they certainly have an effect here and in normal winters give the state a good shot in the arm from the ski resorts. That dividing line is almost exactly halfway between work and home for me, so I will often drive from sun and blue skies in north Williston and then fifteen miles later smack into freezing rain, sleet, snow, wind gusts, etc. with no one slowing down or bothering to put their lights on, well, not “no one,” maybe a third of the buggers just boogie along at 80+ regardless of road surface, visibility or other drivers.
And apropos of nothing, our lovely and brilliant Secretary of State, Lady MacBeth of Little Rock, a.k.a. Field Marshal Rodham, Heroine of Tripoli, etc., has breathlessly informed the world that regime change in Syria is necessary but will bring more bloodshed. Thanks, babe. You rock. You really do.
Murderous fucking cow isn’t a patch on real heroines, like our own Molly Pitcher. Let’s frog-march all these chickenhawk bastards straight to the front and see what they’re made of aside real soldiers.
Worst part is that we lose precious American lives, and things never turn out the way they were supposed to, when it is all over.
We had 2 Miele’s in Germany, both heavy-duty horsepower (cannot remember how much), and one did require service: son had used it to vacuum ashes from the woodburning stove, and the repair guy said, “no sawdust, no ash”. Somehow it clogs the system. Gave that one to the son after repair and bought ourselves another — the cat and dog model.
My father in-law was given a new Miele by a family member (not us). He has not reported any problems with his, but I will check.
As far as the cord winders, those have broken on every vacuum I can remember owning — except for the Panasonic we had short-term and the cat and dog Miele. It is currently broken on this Sears, aka Panasonic, that I am endeavoring to get repaired. Usually under $20 to fix.
<iSo, Ray, what model(s) did you get? Upright or canister?
I got the DC24 model for the upstairs and another model that was being discontinued so I got a discount.
http://www.dyson.com/store/product.asp?product=DC24-ANIMAL
Last thing I want in life is the hassle of dealing with dust and dirt twice — as any shop vac owner is all too familiar with
To each their own I guess. I found messing with bags a hassle as they tended to puff when removing and especially when dumping in the outside trash can. The Dyson you push a button and the bottom opens and the stuff falls out. I just dump the dirt and dust over the fence in the neighboring property (a vacant field that I also mow). The dog hair that is captured is used by the birds for nests as I have looked in a couple of nests and they are full of black dog hair.
This site
http://thebrowser.com/
is addictive, if you need a hit on something good to read. “Writing Worth Reading” is their motto, and it seems true.
One article on there today, is from Thomas Philippon, examining the efficiency of the financial sector during the last century. Do you think the advent of computers has made the financial industry quantumly more efficient, like IT has for nearly every other industry?
The answer is a resounding no! Finance is far less efficient today than in the days of JP Morgan, and is sucking up 2% of the economy ($280 billion in the US) over what the retail sector is able to achieve in cost efficiency. The financial industry has become horribly inefficient, in spite of computers.
In an effort to not put more than one link in a post, here is the link to the Philippon article.
http://voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/7376
Apparently, part of the reason for the inefficiency, is that the financial sector has used IT to dramatically increase the size of its least efficient area: equity trading.
Philippon asks the question for which he is still searching for an answer: Why do people and industries trade so much?
The DC-24 is the one I’ve got a bead on. It’s currently the top contender.
Just to balance things out from the banality of finance — from that same thebrowser.com site:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/01/hard-core/8327/?single_page=true
How has the Internet changed sexual mores? Very dramatically, apparently.
Now you might think, like I do, that Indiana is a backwater state with not much culture, and politicians like governor Mitch Daniels who are so Dan Quayle uncharismatic, that any try for national office will result in near-instant failure.
And you would be right. But Indiana is far from sexually ignorant or repressed. My alma-mater is home to the Kinsey Institute, and — as this Atlantic Monthly article points out — the Center for Sexual Health Promotion. The latter is apparently part of the IU physical education department. Gee, do you think practicing sex is now part of physical education?